Chapter 97: The rift (Third Part)

“So this ice magic is your trump card?” asked Jazor while trying to put the pieces of his smoking pipe back together in one of our rare moments of peace.

An impossible endeavor for him considering the fine and fragile material this thing was made of, but he stubbornly refused to give up.

One week had passed since we met Ilan and Walmir. Things have gradually started to get worse, making us all realize just how essential for our survival this alliance truly was. The terrifying battle we had yesterday against a horde forced me to use my ice magic despite my desire to keep it a secret from our new travel companions.

“More or less.” I shrugged while extending my hand in surrender.

Too content to finally have someone with finer control of the earth element than him to take over his task, Jazor immediately gave me his pipe before adding in an absent-minded voice.

“It sure doesn’t feel like any of your other magic.”

“How so?” I asked with my entire focus on the mana building around the pipe in my hands.

“Well… How should I say it? It feels restrained, not controlled,” he slowly explained as my earth magic was finally summoned in a much more delicate way than him around his pipe.

He had developed many aspects of the earth element to an incredible degree, but pure control of the more basic form of this element stayed beyond him. This was the kind of man he was, the kind that didn’t bother with details. Nevertheless, when anything related to magic was concerned, he was unusually perceptive and accurate.

Restrained was certainly the perfect word to describe my current relationship with this magic.

Before knowing anything about the various aspects of each element, I slowly trained my magic in the most boorish way with Amanda. Against her, a brief moment of enlightenment had allowed me to unlock this magic and snatch victory at the cost of her death.

Understanding of the key concept of this element along with a special affinity granted to me by my abnormal soul were what had allowed this to happen.

However, nothing is free in this world.

Ice is usable by anyone with the water element willing to develop this particular aspect. However, it certainly demands tremendous work and refining to get anywhere, just like with any other aspect.

To have sudden access to an advanced aspect of an element without any prior work had another kind of price. I already paid it against Amanda and was ready to pay it one last time if things truly got desperate, but until then, I stubbornly continued to restrain its power while trying to slowly master it.

Jazor took my lack of answer for what it was: a silent confirmation.

However, he didn’t elaborate until a few minutes later when I handed him back his repaired pipe.

“The thing with Sacred magic, Sillath, is that they are destined,” he simply declared with a contented smile on his face.

“I never told you it was a Sacred magic,” I started before closing my mouth and acknowledging that his experience was more than enough to recognize the difference. “What do you mean by destined?” I asked, confused.

“Well, countless men with a Sacred mage as their mentor spent their lifetime trying to use one, but often without any success. Some call such men foolish for stubbornly persevering when so many aspects are open for them to develop.”

“And you, what do you think of them?”

“They are indeed foolish,” he replied simply while stuffing his pipe with peculiar herbs from one of the pouches on his belt. “The magic at our disposal is truly vast. Someone like you, able to use the four elements, knows it better than most people. Personally, if I had as many elements as you at my disposal, I wouldn’t know where to start and would probably end up developing only one.”

With a self-mocking smile on his face, he snapped his fingers and lit his pipe at the same time, demonstrating in the process the entirety of his abilities with the fire element.

“We all have our own way. Contrary to what most noble dumbasses think, the number of elements is not truly important. What is truly important is how far you go on each path of magic open to you. Sacred magic is an incredible shortcut on one of these paths, but wasting a lifetime to try to awaken one is stupid. If this path of magic is closed to you, it will remain so forever and no amount of effort will change it."

“I’m glad I didn’t spend any effort to acquire mine, then,” I concluded factually.

“Yeah, but you know Sillath,” he suddenly added in a serious voice that didn’t suit him at all. “Although these men, so desperate to acquire easy power, are indeed foolish, those who mock them are even more so, for only those who have not witnessed the true might of a Sacred magic can belittle it.”

“Because it is destined?” I asked back with my eyes fixed on his face.

“Precisely. It isn’t just a shortcut. It is also much more than that. It has a special affinity for its bearer and, as such, offers more power than any other mage who has spent a lifetime developing the same magic could ever hope to achieve. That’s why it has always stirred up desires and imaginations,” he concluded heavily.

Certainly, even restrained, this Sacred magic was an incredible ability that already saved my life many times. I thought that it was simply because my other magics weren’t developed enough yet that its power appeared so disproportionate.

However, it seemed that Sacred magic was even more dangerous than I initially thought, especially for someone like me able to feed it with an enormous amount of mana.

‘Your sin is your own existence.’

The words of the ancestor tree in the Great forest of the west once more assaulted my mind. A painful reminder that I wasn’t truly destined for this power. I simply cheated destiny with the souls of dozens of poor victims fused into mine when I reincarnated into this world.

This kind of power wasn’t natural.

And this reality scared me more than anything.

With such a soul that had already granted me the possibility to use every element and the access to a Sacred magic in my first real battle, I knew what could happen.

I could awaken other Sacred magic and simply skip all the hard work of slowly making my way toward the advanced aspects of the elements.

However, I knew that the cost of something like that would be too much for me to bear.

“So, what do you think I should do?”

I didn’t need to elaborate because I knew exactly why Jazor had started talking about my ice magic.

Despite our alliance, our situation became more desperate every day. In my current condition, I will soon have no other choice but to release the true power of my Sacred magic and I wasn’t sure to be truly ready for that anymore.

“Well, I’m not sure if it will work, but I thought of something,” he simply explained with a wide smile promising trouble.

-----------------------------------------------

“What have you done, Sillath?”

Seth’s shocking words didn’t call for any answer.

It was standing right in front of everyone’s eyes.

The statue of ice was reflecting the rays of the sun with a natural brilliance similar to a giant diamond if not for the fog of cold continuously emanating from it.

It wasn’t the time for explanation or excuses and I certainly wasn’t in a good enough shape for that.

Blood was continuously falling along my bruised face from more cuts than I could count. Even on my knees, without anything moving around me anymore, the world was furiously spinning as if wanting to drag me to the ground. A few of my ribs were also probably broken making it difficult to catch my breath.

My last attack didn’t help my condition.

I certainly wasn’t out of mana, as my monstrous soul wouldn’t allow it, but my young body had finally reached its limits.

With long measured breaths, I tried to calm down, to put the pain and weakness under control. However, the burning of the ring on my thumb interrupted my efforts.

“Get behind me!” I growled with an authority that neither Himara nor Seth dared to defy despite their respective shock or my current condition.

I gritted my teeth and cursed at my rotten luck.

I didn’t have the time for that.

The deviant that showed up all fangs out a few moments later was from a species I had confronted more times than I could remember on these lands. Seth and Himara had already seen me slay dozens of them along our journey. However, my current condition didn’t seem to assure them that I would be able to do the same.

Seth’s long, dark mane-like hair, began to stand up on his head as the tips became unnaturally pointy in a desperate attempt to compete with the beast’s claws and potential magic attacks.

However, contrary to their expectation, the deviant whose rationality should be all but gone didn’t come any closer. Alianelle was now releasing a torrent of mana behind me, but the deviant didn’t take a single step further.

I slowly raised my head covered with sweat and blood to simply stare at it with my only remaining open eye, awakening unpleasant memories at the same time as it was the same eye I had lost in my previous life. The maddened green eyes of the beast could only reflect a desire for blood and violence, but when it crossed mine, I saw another emotion make its way into them.

“Get lost,” I spat with barely contained anger at its sudden appearance.

Magic was mysterious, but animal instincts certainly were just as much so, for not even three seconds later, the deviant obeyed its call and turned its tail to run away.

Free from any interference, I fought against the pain and the spinning of my head to finally stand up under the stunned gaze of the children behind me still ready to dearly defend their lives.

With unsteady steps, I slowly approached the prison of ice I had created. In a deathly silence where only the furious beating of my heart could be heard, I finally managed to put my remaining hand on the ice, cold enough to burn the surface of my skin.

None of the potential animals lurking around to attack Alianelle, nor the children petrified behind, interrupted me this time.

After what seemed like an eternity, a noise finally broke this heavy silence.

A cracking sound I was desperate to hear.

Followed by a long breach, the normally indestructible ice trapping my friends to their death was breaking under the influence of my magic.

A magic that I had never truly tested and that I had developed for this sole purpose.

The vibrations I learned to summon thanks to Jazor, especially gifted with this aspect of the earth element, continued to grow stronger and do their work.

Finally, in a thunderous crash, the ice entrapping Ilan and Paul completely shattered. Their respective bodies collapsed in a similar way and heavily landed near my feet.

“Paul!”

Seth and Himara both rushed to join Paul, unconscious on the ground. Worry was written all over their faces for the man that took care and comforted them all along this arduous journey, something I was never able to do.

Himara was already crying beside his motionless body covered in frost and shattered ice while Seth, with reddened eyes, was gently trying to shake him awake.

I didn’t have the time or the strength to join them and simply noticed with relief that they were still breathing. A few seconds later, both of them quickly started to shiver, which was a good sign as it proved that their bodies were still fighting against the cold.

I put my hand on Ilan’s bare arm and noticed that his skin felt slightly warm to the touch. A sign that he had already started to develop superficial frostbite where his clothes didn’t cover his body, something that normally takes much longer to appear, another proof, if any was necessary, of the extreme cold this magic was able to summon. Fortunately, the ice didn’t have the time to inflict irreparable damage.

They definitely needed medical care, but I wasn’t in any condition to provide it to them. For now, I was simply relieved that this magic had worked. There was just no way of knowing how long it would take to free them or what kind of damage they would have to endure until then. I wasn’t even sure it would truly work as even fire magic had never been able to influence this ice.

“Don’t worry, he will survive,” I assured as gently as possible to compensate for my previous harshness.

“And him?” Seth immediately asked while pointing with his magical hair at Ilan, lying unconscious just next to Paul.

“He will survive,” I simply replied.

“You should kill him.” he immediately added in a pleading tone, unable to hide the hope in his heart.

Such merciless words hadn’t their place in the mouth of a young child, but I could understand him. All along our journey, Ilan had represented an insurmountable obstacle to their freedom and summoned despair in their heart with his presence alone, much more than Walmir ever did. With him defeated, they could finally be free.

I delayed my answer as I had finally managed to gather enough mana for another urgent matter. I put my left hand on my frozen right arm, and after a few seconds, finally freed my hand from its cold prison. The future blistered hand added itself to the long list of wounds that will certainly be difficult to heal in a short time even with healing magic.

My appearance probably reinforced Seth’s impression that we had to act now, while he was unconscious.

All I had to do was end his life to save us all trouble, and maybe a future confrontation when he wakes up.

Paul's sudden coughing fit interrupted my answer. He stirred and finally opened his eyes, clearly lost about what had happened to him. A few seconds was all it took for Himara to fill in the blanks in his memory with confusing explanations barely audible with her head deeply pushed into his chest.

“I see… You really won, Sillath.”

These first words told while gently patting Himara’s and Seth’s heads lacked the triumph I thought I would find in his voice.

He certainly seemed relieved, especially after noticing that Alianelle, a couple of meters behind, was safe.

However, he expressed neither elation nor any real satisfaction at Ilan’s defeat, beyond our survival.

He also avoided crossing my gaze and refused to even look at me directly, preferring to stubbornly stare at the top of Himara’s head still huddled against his chest.

Anyone could tell that his previous determination was already gone, replaced by doubts and remorses.

It was natural because the situation had gotten so far out of hand and almost led to his daughter’s death that it was impossible for him not to question his choices, even though he had no trouble justifying his betrayal to me not so long ago.

The truth is always painful to hear, no matter who says it, so if I had to guess, I would also bet that Ilan’s words had hit a little too close to home for comfort.

However, now wasn’t the time for explanations or apologies,

I still had another thing to do.

I had to prove him wrong.

He probably understood my intent as I walked with unsteady steps toward his daughter, but he didn’t try to interrupt me this time. My hand didn’t have to stay on her head for long. Barely ten seconds after I started to give her my mana to accelerate her natural regeneration, her own began to recede like a tsunami finally appeased.

The relief I felt in my heart when I realized that my intervention had the desired effect was difficult to put into words principally because I wouldn’t have been able to give her much more mana in my current condition. Not to mention the fact that we were all extremely vulnerable and certainly didn’t need any more deviants to show up because of her.

This thought made me realize that the invisible monster who had decimated the military camp and who forced us to run away, hadn’t appeared in the end. The natural conclusion that it had definitely given up on us was the most welcomed news of all.

Ilan’s sudden grunting along with the twitching of his body announced his imminent awakening and immediately chased away this comforting thought.

“Sillath…”

I turned my head so quickly that the whole world started spinning furiously again. However, despite my blurry sight, there was no confusion possible about the owner of that voice.

Familiar blue eyes entered my vision.

Beautiful, innocent eyes that I thought I would never see again.

Relief, shock, disbelief, and happiness all mixed together as I realized what was happening, and made me unable to answer.

How many times have I dreamed about this moment?

How much blood did I shed to make it happen?

Finally, there was no denying it.

This wasn’t a dream.

Alianelle had awakened.

Her endless sleep had finally come to an end and this was all that mattered. With clear eyes, rosy cheeks, and steady breathing, she straightened her back to look at her surroundings, visibly completely lost by our current situation.

“What happened to you?”

The worry in her voice when she noticed my grievous wounds was also the same as before. The same as when I went to train alone under the cold rain. And like many times before, all I did, all I could do with my voice choked with relief and repressed emotions was to say the same words that never appeared truer than in this moment.

“Don’t worry, it’s alright… Everything is alright.”